SImple ATA 100 question 1

[GusBrown]

Hi folks,

I've just bought an IBM Deskstar 120GXP 80gb to use with my Abit KT7-A motherboard.

I've had a look through the BIOS but can't see anything obvious that I need to set to make sure the new hd is using ATA 100. Is the correct cable all I need or have I missed something?

Thanks,

Gus

 

[paparazi]

The Abit KT7A has the Via 133A chipset which automatically supports ATA 100 .
As long as you are using the fine ultra 80 core IDE cable the drive will transfer it's data at the optimal (it's best) speed. which probably won't be 100mb/sec, but thats another story!
So no settings are needed. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[GusBrown]

Thanks Martin.

On a related note: If I have the new (ATA 100) drive on the same IDE channel as my older Maxtor (ATA 66) drive will both work at their optimal speeds or will the new drive drop to ATA 66?

Gus

 

[paparazi]

Yup! sorry! the ATA 100 hard drive will be restricted to the slowest device.
Tis a common problem and the only way around it is to have the two on seperate channels, but then you are putting an even slower CDrom device with a hard drive.
You can buy a PCI to IDE controller card that will give you two more master's or a raid motherboard.
To be honest you probably won't notice much differance and 100mb/sec is only the theoretical max transfer rate,
there are so many other bottlenecks in the system that even these newer drives rarely attain the old 66mb/sec transfer rate. Martin
PS: try it for yourself by running with two on one ide for a couple of days then disconnecting the slave to see! Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[cdogg]

Like paparazi said, you probably won't notice much difference in overall speed by leaving the IBM drive on its own IDE channel.

However, many 7200 RPM drives have been tested on both ATA/66 and ATA/100 interfaces. The result? In a majority of cases that I've seen, the extra "headroom" that ATA/100 provides allows the "burst rates" to be higher. Overall, the average transfer rates are still around 35-40 Mb/sec (depending on the drive) and may only be a 3-5 Mb/sec difference versus ATA/66. So, you probably won't notice much difference.

Where you might is during the transfer from one hard drive to the other. Without buying an add-in IDE controller card to give each its own channel, this will suffer significantly! Definitely avoid placing either on the CDROM controller...